Senators Demand Answers as Sable Offshore and Trump Administration Work to Create New Oil Reserve Without Congressional Approval

WASHINGTON D.C. (KEYT) – Two Senators are demanding answers from the Trump Administration regarding plans to create a West Coast Strategic Petroleum Reserve in coordination with Sable Offshore.

"The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency stockpile of crude oil established to protect the
U.S. economy and national security from major energy supply disruptions. Its needs, expansion,
or operation should not be dictated by any one commercial entity," Wednesday's letter to Secretary of Energy Wright stated.

In 2024, the Houston-based energy company secured a loan from ExxonMobil to fund the purchase of offshore and onshore oil production infrastructure collectively referred to as the Santa Ynez Unit.

The Santa Ynez Unit has been shuttered since a massive oil spill from a ruptured pipeline in 2015 and a federal court ordered required that any restart plans involving the onshore pipelines must include state regulators.

The company's actions, some of which have been sanctioned at the highest levels of the federal government, have resulted in Sable Offshore's financial ties to the Trump Administration being investigated by Congress, civil charges brought by the California Attorney General, criminal charges brought by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney's Office, an outstanding preliminary injunction in state court, an absence of necessary permits from both state and the federal regulators for pipeline operations, a lack of approval from several state agencies in accordance with a federal court order, as well as a missing valid easement to keep or utilize the segment of its pipeline crossing state property.

"We just want them to follow the law," argued Sable Offshore CEO Jim Flores in March of this year during an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham. "[Oil produced in California] is used by the 50 military bases in California, Nevada, and Arizona. And that's the reason why Trump invoked the Defense Production Act...He has to make sure those military bases and those sailors and airmen and so forth have fuel for their jets and their boats and so on."

Despite those roadblocks, on March 13, 2026, the Trump Administration ordered the private energy company to restart oil production despite the unmet conditions of the federal court order and previously necessary regulatory approvals at the local, county, state, and federal levels.

"The Trump Administration remains committed to putting all Americans and their energy security first," stated Secretary Wright at the time of the forced restart in March. "Unfortunately, some state leaders have not adhered to those same principles, with potentially disastrous consequences not just for their residents, but also our national security. Today's order will strengthen America’s oil supply and restore a pipeline system vital to our national security and defense, ensuring that West Coast military installations have the reliable energy critical to military readiness."

Notably, the Trump Administration's order to restart did not explicitly direct crude oil from the Santa Ynez Unit for exclusive military use nor limit its destination to the nation's strategic petroleum reserve at the time and even if it had, those national security claims do not hold up to scrutiny.

Professor Dr. Paasha Mahdavi with UC Santa Barbara's Department of Political Science found that the 2015 closure of the Santa Ynez Unit did not result in a direct increase in imported oil, a key component of arguments by Sable Offshore and the Trump Administration justifying a restart.

"We're the largest global exporter of oil last month in the US," Energy Secretary Chris Wright shared during a press conference earlier this month in Santa Barbara County. "US number one. Russia number two. Saudi Arabia number three. But yet we're standing here in a state, our largest state, our most military intensive state and two-thirds of the oil is imported from distant places overseas. Unacceptable."

The chart below, courtesy of Dr. Mahdavi's research in Economic analysis of market impacts of resuming oil and gas production from the Santa Ynez Unit published in February of 2025, shows the impact of the Santa Ynez Unit's oil production compared to other sources.

"Aside from a peak in imports in 2017-2019, and the pandemic collapse in 2020, foreign import levels in 2023 were roughly the same as in 2014-2015 [see chart below]," explained Professor Mahdavi. "Looking at the period directly after the SYU went offline, there was no increase in foreign imports: imports actually fell to 316 million barrels in 2016 from 320 million barrels in 2014 and 318 million barrels in 2015."

Broad statements about a domestic energy crisis do not match the same Administration's recent actions including cutting billions in energy investments, potentially outside of its legal authority, rescinding over 3.5 million acres of offshore waters leased for energy generation and cutting deals to terminate offshore wind leases for projects on both coasts, and spending billions of dollars to halt plans to build offshore wind farms, an action that is now subject to a Congressional inquiry and multiple Freedom of Information Act requests by Your News Channel.

These unilateral exemptions to federal laws on behalf of private oil and natural gas companies and explicit prohibition of alternative sources of energy all under the umbrella of national security are both not new and ongoing.

Sable Offshore shared with investors that it had resumed production of hydrocarbons from Platform Harmony the day after the announcement of a forced restart and would eventually ramp up to full production from platforms Harmony and Heritage by the end of the same month.

The shallower Platform Hondo is expected to join its sister platforms at full production by this summer shared Sable Offshore earlier this year.

Altogether, all three platforms are expected to produce over 60,000 barrels of oil per day, but the impact on the price of oil we pay domestically is dictated by global production as well as the trade in the futures market.

In 2025, California consumed almost 484 million barrels of crude oil meaning that even the maximum estimated annual yield of crude oil from the Santa Ynez Unit of roughly 22 million barrels of oil per year would fall far short of consumer demand in the state let alone fulfill the energy needs from 50 different military installations across three states, as Sable's CEO Jim Flores claimed was the intention of the forces restart, and certainly difficult to understand how it would fill a new regional petroleum reserve simultaneously.

Additionally, approximately 20 million barrels of oil transited the Strait of Hormuz each day before the war in Iran started in late February, roughly the amount that the nation consumes on any given day.

On Monday, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve confirmed that the nation's reserves were down to 340 million barrels of oil, its lowest level since 1983 while the reserve was still being initially filled.

President Trump admitted how dire the situation is during Wednesday's G7 summit in France stating, "We run out of reserves at about four weeks...there are reserves all over the world, and we would really run out".

According to the Department of Energy, there are currently no strategic oil preserve sites outside of Texas and Louisiana and questions about the locations and size of the future regional strategic reserve remain unanswered.

Senators Padilla and Murray shared how their office's learned about plans to create a new regional petroleum reserve in their letter Wednesday stating, "On June 2, 2026, oil producer Sable Offshore Corp.,... sent a proposal to the Department of Energy which calls for the establishment of a West Coast Petroleum Reserve in California. Sable proposed the new petroleum reserve 'in response to the inquiries made by the Trump Administration'."

While Secretary of Energy Wright said that the Trump Administration and Sable Offshore are only in "active dialogue" about the new reserve, its creation is subject to a process already detailed in federal law.

"The Fiscal Year 2026 Energy and Water Appropriations bill's accompanying report, as a condition of funding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, explicitly prohibits the establishment of 'any new regional petroleum product reserves unless funding for such a proposed regional petroleum product reserve is explicitly requested in advance in an annual budget request and approved by Congress in an appropriations act'."

The Senators noted that no such request was filed by the Department of Energy in its latest budget request.

"The Department of Energy's FY26 budget request, released in May of last year, contained no request for funds to establish or plan for any new regional petroleum reserve, let alone the new West Coast reserve that seems to be under active discussion," noted Senators Padilla and Murray in their letter to Secretary of Energy Wright Wednesday. "As such, any establishment of a new reserve this fiscal year would violate Congressional intent. Furthermore, your department once again omitted any mention of or proposal for a new petroleum reserve in its Fiscal Year 2027 budget request.

While Sable Offshore and the Trump Administtarion have made bold claims about the impact of oil sales from the Santa Ynez Unit on the domestic price of oil, military readiness, and national security, in late March of this year, Sable Offshore's CEO Jim Flores confirmed that an unspecified amount of oil from the Santa Ynez Unit was being sold to a private company.

"Sable is proud to announce oil sales through the Santa Ynez Pipeline System to Chevron," stated Sable Offshore's CEO Jim Flores in a press release. "In doing so, we are providing American oil from American soil through an American pipeline to an American refinery for American consumers and the United States military."

The fact that Chevron is buying oil from the Santa Ynez Unit has a substantial impact going forward.

Court documents showed that Sable Offshore initially secured a $622,000,000 loan from ExxonMobil to fund the purchase of the Santa Ynez Unit from the oil giant.

That line of credit had a very important condition.

Ownership of the Santa Ynez Unit would revert back to ExxonMobil unless oil from the Santa Ynez Unit under Sable's management entered the market.

That deadline and impact of sales were not just noted by Your News Channel author, but also by California's Attorney General when the state filed a lawsuit regarding the forced restart in mid-March.

"Sable was and remains undercapitalized. As a condition of the acquisition, if Sable did not restart production by January 1, 2026, ExxonMobil had the right of reversion," stated on of the state's lawsuits. "[T]he Wright Order [directing a restart] does not say, and no public information indicates, that Sable holds a Title I government contract or that Sable is required to sell its crude to the government in a Title 1 contract. The Wright Order also fails to state where, or to whom, Sable will sell the crude oil it produces."

Your News Channel reached out to ExxonMobil about the change in ownership of the Santa Ynez Unit facilitated by the Trump Administration and the oil giant declined to comment.

"[W]e seek a full description of any current and planned activities to set up a new regional petroleum reserve as well as all correspondence with Sable Offshore Corp. regarding the issue of a new regional reserve. We also request that the Department cease all work to establish any new West Coast Strategic Petroleum Reserve until it has followed the process Congress has laid out for establishing any new petroleum reserve," concluded Wednesday's letter without providing a deadline on compliance. "Given the current strains on our nation's energy security caused by this Administration's actions, the Department should be focused on reinforcing existing reserves, which are reaching historic lows due to announced withdrawals, not pursuing costly new proposals driven by political considerations rather than strategic need."

Your News Channel reached out to the Department of Energy as well as Sable Offshore for more information about the planned regional strategic reserve and their respective responses will be added to this article when they are received.